21 replies to this topic

[Al Henderson]

Working in Video Wave, trying to edit clips, my audio will often get out-of-sync with the video.  I'm talking native audio, here - not additional tracks!  It seems to happen at random ... unfortunately, it can happen when I am rendering a video file and I don't know, 'till I'm done.  Anyone see this before and have a fix?

[Beerman]

Al Henderson, on Nov 30 2006, 02:13 AM, said:

Working in Video Wave, trying to edit clips, my audio will often get out-of-sync with the video.  I'm talking native audio, here - not additional tracks!  It seems to happen at random ... unfortunately, it can happen when I am rendering a video file and I don't know, 'till I'm done.  Anyone see this before and have a fix?

Problems like this are reported all the time.  Some of the suggestions are to make sure your drive is defragged regularly and work with smaller chunks of files instead of larger ones.  I don't know why this happens sometimes and not others and am struck with this problem from time to time myself.  Working with smaller files seems to do the trick for me.

[Al Henderson]

Well, I've had this program for almost 2 weeks and have not been able to complete my first project, yet.  I have spent about four hours on the 'phone, between 3 Roxio Techs (who have all tried their best!) for several different issues.  They have had me download the newest nVidea driver (a 4 hr. download, on my dial-up), uninstall EMC-9 (and edit my registry, to eliminate all traces of MyDVD-LE that came on my new Dell) and do a clean reinstall, de-frag my hard-drive, remove all critical items from my start-up ... hell, I can't recall what-all else!
The video hangs while the audio rolls merrily along (on playback, in VW) ... the whole program hangs while trying to assemble a slideshow ...
I'm running a brand new (Nov. 2006) Dell E520 Pentium D, dual-core (2.66 GHz, 533 FSB), 1 GB memory with 188 GB free on a 250 GB drive.  My video card is a 256 MB nVidia Geforce 7300 LE.
I sure don't want to sound like a whiner but, at this point, I certainly could not recommend this program to anyone ... 'just in case'!

[REDWAGON]

Have you tried Paul's suggestion of using shorter video files, then adding them to the production. I too had this problem with some quite long video files and when I shortened them, the problem seemed to disappear.



I still believe that my particular problem was caused by not pre-striping my video tape before recording. I say this as I have never had the problem with pre-striped tapes. (This all assumes that the audio is part of a video clip) There are others that say this has nothing to do with it, so there is some contraversy about my idea.



Frank...

[Al Henderson]

I have no idea what pre-striping a video means.  I burn videos from my camcorder (digi-8) onto a Lite-On stand-alone recorder, then put those discs into my computer drive.  Media Import won't import them, so I simply do a straight drag-and-drop to my hard-drive. From there, I can open them in VideoWave (although why VW sees two copies of each movie - 'Movie 1' and 'Movie 2" being identical - I don't know) and edit them.  Although I might start with a 10 or 15 minute movie, each clip I trim out is only a few seconds to a few minutes long.
Quite honestly, I have identified so many 'issues' in these (less than) 2 weeks - unresolveable, so far, by Roxio tech's even, that I am consisdering starting a contest to see if anyone can top my total!
It sure doesn't look like my Mom will get any videos of her grandson for Christmas.

[REDWAGON]

Well, if you are using files that are only 10 to 15 minutes long, I don't think that using a shorter file is your problem. 10 to 15 minute files should be just fine.

"Striping"---Before you use any tape in your camcorder to record on, close the lens and place the camcorder in record mode and start recording. Let the camcorder record all the way to the end of the tape. Then rewind the tape to the beginning. This places a time track on the tape that is constant all the way through the tape . So when you record any video, the time track will never start at one time and then change back to a new start time that could be exactly the same time as a previous recording. On most camcorders, when you start and stop a recording, the time also stops and starts accordingly. This means that on any particular recording, there can be an exact time shown for different recordings.

Wear and tear on your camcorder is one of the drawbacks to striping as you will most probably hear from others. And I do not argue with that.

Frank...

[Al Henderson]

Ahhhh, okay.  Thanks - I didn't know about that.  Still ... I don't think that would be the cause of my Video Wave prob's.  When I playback either the tape, itself, or the burned DVD on either the Lite-On recorder or a Panasonic player, the audio & video are in sync.  It is only when I process it in/through VW that it gets out of sync ... and that, as I mentioned previously, seemingly at random.  'Seemingly'.

[REDWAGON]

Have you tried using EMC's capture program to capture all of the video directly from your camcorder to your computer, either as an MPEG-2 or AVI file ? (AVI capturing will end up as a very much larger file than MPEG2) The EMC capture program requires that you capture with a Firewire (IEEE1393) cable rather than USB. Even when capturing this way and the capture time is extra long, you might experience the out of sync problem. That's why it has been suggested using shorter files.

Frank....

[Al Henderson]

Let me start by saying that I do appreciate your efforts to help me resolve this - any bitterness that comes through in my posts is a result of my feelings toward this product ... NOT anyone's help, here, or even the Tech's at Roxio!  (They really have tried to help.)
I don't have firewire.  I don't have a dedicated video card.  I DID have the most up-to-date nVidea driver and it didn't help.  In fact, I just did a rollback, because the newer driver doesn't seem to support widescreen monitors - at least, there was not a display setting that yielded true proportions to images (photo's).
There is nothing in the online help (why they call it that, I don't know - you certainly don't have to be 'online' to access it *grin*) or through AskRoxy that relates to native audio being whacked-out.
When I tried copying directly to my hard-drive from my camcorder (a Sony TRV-480 digi-8) using Sony's software and a USB connection, the result was total crap.
I figure I might try the Support (phone) line one more time ... but, if three different tech's, with all Roxy's own resources at their disposal have been unable to make ANY improvement in my lot, even though I definitely have better-than-recommended system spec's ... well, I think this thing will go back to Costco next weekend.
It is just so frustrating to buy a product obviously meant for an average consumer that I (and I am NOT new to computers - I'm just no techie) cannot do a damned thing with, after two weeks and MANY hours of effort.
Anyhow ... in the meantime, I am, of course, still open to sugestions.
Thanks, all!

[REDWAGON]

Well, I'll say this Al, you have stayed with your problem like a real trooper !!! After having gone through all that you have to try and resolve your problem, you deserve a medal of some sort. I'm just really sorry that the users on this forum couldn't be of more help, let alone all the Roxio tech's you have talked to.

It's really to bad that your Sony doesn't have a firewire port. I just recently purchased a new Sony camcorder that does have both USB and firewire ports and the capture results using EMC I have gotten so far are great.

Not having a dedicated video card really doesn't help either. There are so many computers now that have on-board video chips that really aren't the best for doing all the tasks that EMC is capable of.

When you say that capturing your video with the Sony software via the USB port on the camcorder was "CRAP", what exactly was the crap part in your opinion ??

Maybe someone else can hop in here and help you Al. And BTW Al, don't worry about any of our main GURU users getting upset for your frustrations. We all have pretty think skin and always appreciate those that don't give up and keep trying to solve their problems on the forum.

Frank...

[JUpton]

Al Henderson, on Nov 30 2006, 01:31 PM, said:

I figure I might try the Support (phone) line one more time ... but, if three different tech's, with all Roxy's own resources at their disposal have been unable to make ANY improvement in my lot, even though I definitely have better-than-recommended system spec's ... well, I think this thing will go back to Costco next weekend.
It is just so frustrating to buy a product obviously meant for an average consumer that I (and I am NOT new to computers - I'm just no techie) cannot do a damned thing with, after two weeks and MANY hours of effort.
Anyhow ... in the meantime, I am, of course, still open to sugestions.
Thanks, all!

Al,

I am by no means an expert.  In fact, I just started playing with video editing using EMC9 several weeks ago.  I also experienced audio synch problem when importing from a DVD burned on my set-top recorder.  None of the usual suggestions I found in the forums here helped.  I tried the suggestions given me on the forum to no avail.

Through much experimentation, I concluded that EMC9 had problems with something in the VOB format written by my particular set-top recorder.  I found a work-around that allows me to use the EMC9 suite of tools to edit and burn DVDs without the audio synch problems.

The solution for me was to use a free third party tool to convert the VOB file sets from the set-top recorder's DVD to MPEG.  I then use that MPEG as the starting point for using EMC9.  I have no audio synch problems since using this work-around method.  In essence, I use the free tool only in place of EMC9's own media import tool.

The tool I used is VOB2MPG.  Links can be found on the VideoHelp forum at http://www.videohelp...ls?tool=VOB2MPG and downloaded from the links there.  To use it, I simply put the DVD from the set-top DVD recorder into the computer's DVD drive, open VOB2MPG, point its input to the drive and point the output to a hard file directory where I will work on it later with EMC9.  For me VOB2MPG converts the DVD about 3 times faster than EMC9 Media Import did.  (And the Media Import file was out of synch.)  Once I have the single converted MPEG, all EMC9 tools work perfectly with no audio synchronization problems.

I cannot explain what is different from my set up (or maybe my set-top recorder) when others have no audio problems using EMC9 directly but this free tool appears to clean up my VOB files such that EMC9 works with them flawlessly.  That was not my experience without using VOB2MPG.

It might be worth a download and try to see if your audio synch problems are also helped with this technique.
If not, you can proceed with the "plan b" you outlined above.  I share your frustrations since I was there a couple of weeks ago but I am a happy camper now...


John

Edited by JUpton, 30 November 2006 - 06:29 PM.

[Al Henderson]

First of all ... to Frank.  Thanks for the empathy.  Heh, heh - trust me, though ... I'm not as patient as I may seem.  If it were not a 1 1/2 hr. drive to that Costco store, this package might have been returned several days ago!  (*grin*)  As for the 'Gurus' ... well, admittedly, I have seen some rather acerbic comments, elsewhere, but no one has said anything the least bit offensive to me.  I just wanted to be sure that I was not coming across that way, either.

John - thanks a LOT for that tip.  It's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new video card.  I am downloading it, right now and will report back on my experiences with it.  For want of a better forum, I will post such right here.  Wish me luck!

Cheers -
Al

[Ilikemytoys]

REDWAGON, on Nov 30 2006, 05:05 PM, said:

Well, I'll say this Al, you have stayed with your problem like a real trooper !!! After having gone through all that you have to try and resolve your problem, you deserve a medal of some sort. I'm just really sorry that the users on this forum couldn't be of more help, let alone all the Roxio tech's you have talked to.

It's really to bad that your Sony doesn't have a firewire port. I just recently purchased a new Sony camcorder that does have both USB and firewire ports and the capture results using EMC I have gotten so far are great.

Not having a dedicated video card really doesn't help either. There are so many computers now that have on-board video chips that really aren't the best for doing all the tasks that EMC is capable of.

When you say that capturing your video with the Sony software via the USB port on the camcorder was "CRAP", what exactly was the crap part in your opinion ??

Maybe someone else can hop in here and help you Al. And BTW Al, don't worry about any of our main GURU users getting upset for your frustrations. We all have pretty think skin and always appreciate those that don't give up and keep trying to solve their problems on the forum.

Frank...

1: Use a firewire, much better rate of transfer.
2: Turn off all firewalls, Router if you have one, and your Windows firewall.
3: Turn off anti-virus programs.

I had to do all that when I had my JVC DLV520 I think it was...

I have the simular vidoe card, don't think that would be the issue....

Good luck !!

[Cybersalt]

For what it's worth, here are two things I just tried that solved some audio sync problems I was having.

1.  I now do my captues in .AVI.  I'm not sure why this made a difference and yes makes for some extra big files and steps in the production process, but after a ninety minute capture off of the DV tape in my camera, the audio was in sync with the video.

2.  This one is really weird.  I replaced the battery on my motherboard.  The last few days I noticed that video I was watching on my TV capture card was jumping to keep in sync with the sound AND quicktime and flash videos I was watching online were getting out of sync in the play back.  Another program I use kept warning me my system time was minutes out of sync with the online site it checks and even though I was telling it to reset the time on my computer, it quickly woudl tell me the clock was wrong again.  

I change the battery on my CPU and this fixed everything.  It may not be a solution for all the problems described above, but it cured mine.

[Kenn Kong]

I have done extensive testing on this, and I know what causes it for me, and how to work around it.

Al Henderson, on Nov 30 2006, 03:13 AM, said:

Working in Video Wave, trying to edit clips, my audio will often get out-of-sync with the video.  I'm talking native audio, here - not additional tracks!  It seems to happen at random ... unfortunately, it can happen when I am rendering a video file and I don't know, 'till I'm done.  Anyone see this before and have a fix?

In my case, audio gets out of sync whenever Videowave (or MyDVD) uses the hardware encoder on my ATI AIW 9600 graphics card.  I know it is doing this when I see the MPEG graphic instead of the video clip itself while it is rendering.  Everything stays in sync until the first transition (I only do cuts, BTW), then the audio jumps ahead of the video, and then gradually falls behind.

The workaround I found is to force it to use software rendering, which is much slower but does work.  There are many ways to do this, but one simple way is to add a blank text track to your project.  Note that setting the software rendering option in Tools-Option doesn't work for me (it still uses the hardware anyway.)

I don't have to do this if all I am doing is copying a finished movie to DVD.  So long as the movie has no edits in it, the hardware rendering doesn't seem to cause a problem.

Hope this helps someone, if not you.

[DirectorWannaBe]

I think this warrants some attention from Roxio.  This is obviously a problem with their encoding algorithms.

I too have a high-end PC (2.6 ghz processor, 1 GBram, 256K Nvidia Video Card).

I have tried both hardware and software encoding, both have the SAME problem.  The audio is about 1 second AHEAD of the video.

This is very frustrating, and basically renders a LOT of work completely useless. Nothing like spending weeks editing and perfecting your work, matching transitions PERFECTLY with music, matching lips with lyrics, etc., only to have the flippin program push everything out of sync.

Like others, it is PERFECT in the video wave preview, perfect in the MyDVD preview, but when I write to disc, it's hosed.  I have tried burning to disc directy, then creating an iso file on my hard drive and burning that to disc, I've tried burning to my internal DVD drive, an external drive, I've tried different discs and I've tried software/hardware encoding.  I've also shut down everything (firewall, virus, etc).

PLEASE somebody help us out here.

[james_hardin]

DirectorWannaBe, on Dec 23 2006, 12:36 AM, said:

I think this warrants some attention from Roxio.  This is obviously a problem with their encoding algorithms.

I too have a high-end PC (2.6 ghz processor, 1 GBram, 256K Nvidia Video Card).

I have tried both hardware and software encoding, both have the SAME problem.  The audio is about 1 second AHEAD of the video.

This is very frustrating, and basically renders a LOT of work completely useless. Nothing like spending weeks editing and perfecting your work, matching transitions PERFECTLY with music, matching lips with lyrics, etc., only to have the flippin program push everything out of sync.

Like others, it is PERFECT in the video wave preview, perfect in the MyDVD preview, but when I write to disc, it's hosed.  I have tried burning to disc directy, then creating an iso file on my hard drive and burning that to disc, I've tried burning to my internal DVD drive, an external drive, I've tried different discs and I've tried software/hardware encoding.  I've also shut down everything (firewall, virus, etc).

PLEASE somebody help us out here.

It is a problem with every authoring software made!

I had no problem with V6, but V7 required me to defragment before writing any ISO file. Yet V8 and V9 have been working without that extra step.

Also had some trouble with Ulead in this area…

In short, no magic cure. Experiment and find the procedure that works for you.

[DirectorWannaBe]

What else could I experiment with?

I am looking at the project in MyDVD9.  When I "preview" the project, everything is perfectly synchronized.

What options do I have?  The ONLY option that this wonderful program gives you on the "burn" screen is where you want to put the finished file.

I've tried every experiment listed in this thread, but none fix the sync issue.

[grandpabruce]

DirectorWannaBe, on Dec 23 2006, 04:24 PM, said:

What else could I experiment with?

I am looking at the project in MyDVD9.  When I "preview" the project, everything is perfectly synchronized.

What options do I have?  The ONLY option that this wonderful program gives you on the "burn" screen is where you want to put the finished file.

I've tried every experiment listed in this thread, but none fix the sync issue.

Take the project that you created in VideoWave, and output it as a DV-AVI file, and burn that, using MyDVD.  See if your sync problems are cured.

[james_hardin]

Also, at least for now, defragment before doing the DV-AVI output GPB suggested. Then defragment again before burning!

Let's see if we can eliminate the sync, then figure what the minimum number of steps would be to keep it that way.